Moonlight filtered in through the window and rested upon two beds. In one of the beds, the thick blanket was thrown off very quietly, so as to not disturb the occupant of the other bed. The boy who threw off the blanket reached over to his nightstand. He put on a pair of thick, black-rimmed glasses. They had a green tint to them, effectively obscuring his eyes. He rummaged through the drawer in his nightstand until he grabbed something small and put it in his pants pocket. As he climbed out of bed, a beam of moonlight washed over him, revealing him to whoever might be looking: a swath of brown hair covered a great deal of his face, while the glasses veiled another good portion. He wore a yellow shirt, a dark blue bow tie, and a matching pair of gloves. He wore a pair of shorts, also a dark shade of blue. As he got up, he put on his specially designed boots, labeled with a 'D.' The light gray boots reached up to his knees, and upon closer inspection, they appeared to have retractable wheels set in the bottom. The boy quietly tiptoed towards the door, and... CRASH! He knocked over a lamp. Immediately, a light from the other side of the room switched on.

"Eerrgh... Terry? What are you doing up?" the kid in the other bed asked, rubbing his eyes groggily. "It's midnight! We have our mechanical engineering test tomorrow!"

"Smith, you're my roommate," Terry replied. "You should know by now that that class is irrelevant for me."

"I don't follow."

Terry sighed. "Look, there's something I have to do. If I let you in on it, will you promise not to tell the headmaster?"

Smith sat up. "Sure, Terry, you know that you can tell me anything."

"Very well," Terry said. "Follow me." Smith climbed out of his bed and put on a black T-shirt and a pair of jeans. He very quickly ran his hand through his short blonde hair and retrieved his backpack. Together, they crept out of their room and down the hallway.

"Now," muttered Terry, "Be very silent. We can't afford anyone else finding out about..." His advice was unheeded as Smith promptly tripped over a doorstop, fell over, and proceeded to dump the contents of his backpack over the floor. Very loudly, of course. The door that they were in front of creaked open, and a set of fearful eyes peered out. Upon seeing Terry and Smith, however, the set of eyes became less terrified and stepped into the hallway. The set of eyes belonged to a very bulky student with a shock of bright red hair.

"Terry? Smith? What are y'all doing up?" asked the student with a very pronounced Southern accent.

"I am afraid that we can't tell you, Mickey, it could get us in a lot of-" Terry was cut off as Smith interrupted him.

"We're gonna go see this thing that Terry has to do! Wanna come?"

"Sure! Sounds like a load a' laughs!" Mickey said.

Terry slapped his forehead. "Oh, for the love of God..." He continued down the hallway, Smith and Mickey trailing close behind.

"I cannot BELIEVE how inept you are at traveling down a hallway!" Terry hissed at Smith. Due to Smith tripping over things, running into things, or slipping on things, the small group of Terry, Smith, and Mickey had since amassed every student on the floor. Terry grumbled under his breath and stopped in front of a door. "Okay, everyone who has been tagging along..." here, he stopped to glare at Smith, "Here is where it gets imperative that everyone remains calm and most importantly, quiet." Terry glared at Smith again. "What I am about to show you is the culmination of my years at Einstein Academy." The crowd oohed and aahed in appreciation. Terry opened the door and revealed a small room.

"Dude, that's what your accomplishment is?" asked one of the older students. "A room?"

"No. The room will merely serve as a purpose to transport us to my project," Terry responded, pronouncing each word eloquently. He led all the students into the room and stepped in, closing the door behind him. Terry pulled a small device out of his pants pocket and pressed a button on it. The room hummed softly and started shaking. In the background, a song began playing.

Smith, being the closest to the back, could make out lyrics: '...and I know what you're expecting...I know where you're gonna go...I know why you're gonna lose...' After the room vibrated for a few minutes, Terry pressed another button on the remote he had and the door to the room opened. Instead of stepping out into the hallway, like most of the students expected, Terry led the group into a dimly lit, spacious room with a mechanical hum whirring away in the background.

"This, friends, is my lab. Because of my enormous intellect..." At this point, a few of the older students gritted their teeth, "the headmaster allowed me to construct a laboratory deep in the bowels of the school. He lets me conduct any sort of experiment here after classes are done. However, I fear that he would not approve of my latest undertaking. So, he shall not know.

"Many of you are aware of the F-Zero races. For the uninformed, the F-Zero Grand Prix is a series of races held in locales all over the universe. The thing that sets them apart from the earlier F-Max races is that the engines actually allow the crafts to float about a foot above the ground... This allows them to achieve mind-boggling speeds."

A student in the back raised his hand and asked, "Um... what?"

Terry sighed and replied, "Think pod racing on steroids." A general murmur of understanding swept through the crowd. Terry waited for the murmur to die down and continued. "The main contender for this year's race is Captain Falcon. However, in celebration of his second Grand Prix win in a row, the Grand Prix Committee is opening up twenty more slots for new racers to register. To the best of my knowledge, ten of those slots have already been taken."

Smith spoke up. "Terry, you can't possibly mean that you want to enter... you would need a craft of your own, to start!"

Terry grinned. "They don't call me Digi-Boy for nothing!" He snapped his fingers and machinery all over the lab whirred to life. A hole opened in the ceiling and a light blue craft descended from it. It was sleek, a bulb at one end, containing both the cockpit and the engines, which tapered into a thin front.

"Allow me the honor of introducing you to... the Cosmic Dolphin!" At this, a snicker rolled through the audience. Terry scowled. "What? Don't tell me that any of you could do better!"

An assortment of various suggestions erupted from the group. "The Pink Spider!" "No, the Magic Seagull!" "The Silver Rat sounds cool!" "No! No! The Dark Schneider!" "That's stupid! How about the Smith Racer?" The crowd fell silent and turned toward Smith. "What? It's just an idea..."

"Enough!" shouted Terry. "It's already been named! Now, this is the craft I shall be using. I built it with my own two hands... it took me four years!" Terry paused. "This will be the last you will see of me until I can win the Grand Prix. That may be as little as a few months, or as long as ten years... But I will return! I promise you that!"

Smith moved closer to Terry. "Terry? Um... if you for some reason don't make it back..."

"Yes?"

"Can I have your Game Boy?"

Terry stared at Smith for a minute and shook his head. He clambered into the Cosmic Dolphin and snapped. All of the mechanics in the lab powered down, except for a door that opened and let the night air waft in on the students. The Cosmic Dolphin powered up and zoomed out the door. "So long!" Terry called as he shot off Einstein Academy's campus.

The other students looked at each other. Smith glanced toward Mickey and stated, "He's... so brave." Mickey nodded his head.

"Hey, how do you suppose we get out of the lab? Terry has the controls..."

Terry glanced out of the window at the school where he had spent the last twelve years of his life, rapidly getting smaller in the distance. He cleared the thoughts of nostalgia from his head and snapped his fingers. The Cosmic Dolphin took over on autopilot while a 3-D map of the surrounding area appeared in front of him. He glanced over it.

"Hmmm... registrations are being held in Mute City. That means that I have to go through Aeropolis to get there, but Aeropolis' main computer has been down lately, so traffic will be horrible. I could go through the Red Canyon as a shortcut, but I think that a band of thieves has been hiding out there... I wish I watched the news more often..." Terry pondered for a moment. "I know! I'll go through Green Plant!"

But as he pronounced this decision, two vehicles zoomed past him. Terry blinked in shock and snapped his fingers. The map disappeared and the craft returned manual steering to him. Terry accelerated and quickly moved past the two crafts. He parked the Cosmic Dolphin in an inconspicuous shrubbery and hid himself as well. One of the crafts rammed the other, causing the latter's engines to explode and grounding it. A man stumbled out, clad entirely in black with horns adorning his headgear. The second vehicle slowed to a stop and the driver got out. He was a man adorned in purple and red with a purple cape. Terry saw the faint outline of a brain on the back of the man's head, but he attributed it to a trick of the light.

"No... please... I can win it this time..." the man in black gasped.

The man in purple lifted the other by his neck and muttered in a gravelly voice, "You know the price of failure..." He set him down and got back in his craft, a sleek dark-purple vehicle that started out bulbous but swept into points at the back. The purple craft sped off. The man in black shakily stood up and walked away slowly, leaving the smoking remains of his craft behind.

Terry could barely hear the following words "I will win..." as the man wandered away. Terry shivered and got back into the Cosmic Dolphin.

It was dawn when Terry finally managed to get to Mute City. He parked outside of the registration building, a garish, loud skyscraper decked out entirely with gaudy neon lights that pictured, of all things, a cow. Terry entered and promptly ran into another boy that looked to be about his age.

"Hey! You punk! Watch where you're going!" the kid yelled at him. Terry took a closer look at the kid he had apparently offended. He was short, his head mostly obscured by an aviator's helmet. He wore a brown vest that covered a white shirt with a Japanese symbol on it. He wore brown shorts and had wooden sandals on his feet. The most striking thing about him, though, was the katana that he had strapped to his waist. At this point, the boy whipped out the katana and pointed it right at Terry. "You idiot! Are you entering the races? 'Cause you have absolutely no chance! I am the best! Remember the name Daigoroh, because you'll be worshipping it someday!"

Terry stood where he was, still in shock, as an older man, rather chubby with sunglasses and a bandana on but otherwise dressed similarly to Daigoroh, turned around and picked Daigoroh up. "Stop wasting your breath on him," he said, "We have to get you registered!"

"But Dad..." Daigoroh whined, "I was having fun berating him!"

"You can do it later, Dai," his father said. "For now, though, we need to get you ready for racing."

"...Okay, Dad." Daigoroh stuck his tongue out at Terry as he passed.

Terry recovered from the shock of that onslaught and looked at where the Gorohs had passed through. There were three doors, reading 'Men,' 'Women,' and 'Other.' After wondering briefly who would be in the third door, Terry opened the first and walked through. A woman clad in a white suit greeted him.

"Hi! I'm Jody Summer, and I will be helping you register today. You got lucky –you are registering for the last spot! Do you have a parent with you, young man?" she asked with a pleasant smile on her face.

"Um... no, I'm sorry, I didn't bring my parents with me," Terry answered, neglecting to include that his parents dumped him off at an academy when he was only a year old.

"Oh, well, that's okay. I need to collect some information about you, however. What is your full name?"

"Terry Getter."

"Age?"

"14 years."

"Craft?"

"Cosmic Dolphin."

"We will have our technicians take a look at your craft, to get its specs. Now, for the last bit of info... what do you want to be called in the race literature?"

Terry paused. "What do you mean?"

"Well, you don't have to use your real name when you race. We have a racer by the name of Sterling LaVaughn who races under the name the Skull. Some racers, like Octoman, have true names that we can't even pronounce. Do you want a racing name?"

Terry thought for a moment. "Yes. I would like to be called... Digi-Boy."